Governor Kay Ivey on Tuesday named Business Council of Alabama members Tim McCartney and Sandra Koblas to lead the Alabama Workforce Council.
Governor Ivey named McCartney as chairman and Koblas as vice chair. McCartney served as president of McCartney Construction in Gadsden and Koblas is human resources director with Austal USA in Mobile. Both served on the Alabama Workforce Council board of directors.
Governor Ivey challenged the Alabama Workforce Council to focus on implementing the Success Plus plan – one part of her Strong Start, Strong Finish education initiative. The plan was developed by a committee of the Alabama Workforce Council to address Alabama’s increasing need for workers with certificates, credentials, or degrees in addition to a high school diploma.
“The Alabama Workforce Council seeks to analyze and understand issues that will help build a stronger, more sustainable workforce, thereby improving the lives of Alabama’s workers and their families by creating new employment opportunities in our state,” Governor Ivey said.
“I share the vision of the governor and believe that the Success Plus plan provides us a blueprint as a Council moving forward,” McCartney said. “I would like to ask each committee to adopt one of five priorities identified in the Success Plus plan as their committee focus moving forward.”
The Alabama Workforce Council, created in 2014, serves as an advisory body of business and industry leaders tasked with formulating policies, developing innovative educational workforce programming and discussing issues critical to workforce development needs in Alabama.
Since 2014, Alabama Workforce Council recommendations have resulted in the realignment of the state’s workforce structure, increased productivity of the regional workforce development councils, encouraged collaboration between the education and business communities, helped grow the number of career coaches in the state’s public high schools, developed a statewide AlabamaWorks! workforce brand, and established a statewide educational attainment goal.